


The Blood of the Lamb

by Coyote Grins (Inksinger)



Category: Warcraft - All Media Types, World of Warcraft
Genre: Bloodplay, Character Death, Character Undeath, F/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Torture, Psychological Trauma, Strangulation, interplay of sex and violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-01
Updated: 2018-02-01
Packaged: 2019-03-12 07:12:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13542342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inksinger/pseuds/Coyote%20Grins
Summary: There was no time, and scarcely any warning. Marwyn and Falric fell as one upon the adventurers who dared intrude upon their master's quarters, leaving Jaina alone before the Lich King.





	The Blood of the Lamb

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Triskaideka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Triskaideka/gifts).



It is dark and cold when she awakens, and the pain pulsating through her skull means that for a long, long while, that is all that Jaina can discern of her surroundings. It's nearly enough to cause her to black out again _(again?)_

How she keeps her feet at all is a mystery until she tries to raise a hand to her forehead - and finds that she can't. Her muscles respond; she can feel the chill of the air across her skin, especially about her wrists…

…No, that isn't air. It's too cold, too solid to be air. She tries to look down and finds her head and neck similarly immobilized, though there is no icy chill about her throat--

 _Shadows burn about her throat, burn like ice, like acid, like the bite of thousands upon thousands of teeth sinking jaggedly into her flesh and lifting her high above the ground and the sudden desperate battle breaking out as the adventurers are set upon and slaughtered--_

A gasp shudders through her teeth as the memories suddenly slam into her, tearing away the last shreds of drowsiness. A hard tremor runs down her arms, and the sound of chains being gently shaken fills the air.

She's chained. She's chained, and she's standing in a room - the sound echoes off walls she cannot see in the blackness - and she hardly thinks the chains are even necessary because she can also feel now that there are layers upon layers of restraint spells in place about her.

A dawning sense of dread washes through her. Trembling now and hoping against hope, Jaina tries to conjure a magelight - a small, harmless little bit of magic - and is instantly rewarded with a shock of pain through her arms and a horrible sense of emptiness, as though she's just tried to scrape water from an empty trough.

Someone moves behind her.

Someone in plate mail.

“Awake at last. I hope your rest was… pleasant.”

Jaina's trembling grows more intense, for the voice of the Lich King is the echo of a thousand tombs, the shattering of a million skeletons, the howling of countless souls damned to the torment of undeath.

Heavy footsteps echo about the room, slow and measured, as though each one is taken with the utmost care. The hair on the back of her neck prickles as she feels him draw within arm's reach behind her… and then he begins to pace in a slow, menacing circle around her. The icy gaze that burns from within the Helm of Domination is narrowed, as though Jaina is no more than some ugly little nuisance.

He does not speak again as he circles her again… and again… and again. Jaina tries to open her mouth and finds it, too, has been made immobile. She tries to scream past her locked jaw and feels numbness close fast about her throat until she falls “silent” once again.

Little wonder he seems content simply to stalk and stare at her. The Lich King has her utterly helpless before him.

After three circles, he pauses at her side and leans in - too close, far, far too close, if the proximity does not cause her heart to burst then surely the chill coming off of him will burn the skin of her unguarded face and neck.

"Where are your allies, Jaina?" he asks, and his voice drops to the low growl of tectonic plates grating against each other beneath the icy wastes. Breath colder even than the air around them billows out against her skin, stinging it mercilessly. “You seemed so certain they would come for you.”

Again Jaina tries to speak, and again the silencing spells prevent her. Even parting her lips is a greater feat than she can manage.

There's a long, sharp sound from within the Helm - a hiss of indrawn breath. When Jaina trembles this time, it has nothing to do with the bite of Arthas' next exhalation.

“Your fear chokes the air about you.” Arthas leans back again and resumes his pacing with a low chuckle like blocks of ice colliding in the arctic ocean. “And well it should. No help will come for you, little mage. The only ones who might have had any chance of reaching you are being resurrected as we speak. They will make for powerful servants of the Scourge.”

Jaina struggles against her bindings, but all the strength and strain she pours into her body result in only the barest twitch of her arms - not even enough to rattle the physical chains ensnaring them before she falls limp from the effort. The magic about her is strong enough to hold her upright even still; an entire war band of tauren could be rendered just as helpless as she with this combination of spells. The chains scarcely seem necessary at all.

A gauntleted hand slides along her shoulder and stops at the base of her throat. The ice-worn leather of the glove scratches at her skin as her torso is rocked with a scream that dies before it can be given voice at all.

Not again--!

"Struggling is pointless." Arthas stands behind her, too close behind her - his armor brushes against her back, his breath sears her scalp, he was always taller than her but somehow he seems mountainous now--

The hand at her throat tightens almost imperceptibly, and Jaina feels something wear itself raw near the back of her mouth as the silencing spells quash another shriek - but no pain follows, no suffocation. There is only a mild backwards pull in that hand, and the sound of…

"You did not seem so terrified of me before, Jaina."

Tears stream soundlessly from her eyes, for now his voice is more his own again - still echoing faintly with undeath, but unfiltered, unchanged by the Helm and the hideous magicks infusing it. He must have removed the wretched thing.

Suddenly she's glad she cannot turn to look at him. She doesn't want to look at him - she doesn't know if she could bear the agony of seeing him like this.

Arthas doesn't give her a choice. He takes another three steps and stands before her again; his hand never breaks contact with her skin, sliding around her throat as he goes until his thumb rests near the intersection of her collarbone. Ice seems to settle in her veins as she drags in a sharp breath through her nose, and even if she were not bound so thoroughly Jaina would have frozen in place for fear of having her throat crushed in on itself a second time.

Her eyes lock on Arthas, and the pain of seeing what the Scourge have done to him is almost enough to distract her from her fear. The face she loved so well is gaunt and gray now, the strong jaw glass-sharp and dusted with stubble, the full lips thin and chapped until they should be bloodied… but of course the dead do not bleed.

It is a torture all its own to raise her eyes to his and see the light of them paler and less brilliant without the Helm - to see that the skin around them is reddened and worn as though he's spent the last decade weeping ceaselessly. But the skin is sunken and lined rather than swollen, giving him a half-mad look that drags at her like nails.

This is not her Arthas…

He tilts his head with a smirk, and the hand at her chest slides up along the length of her neck, torturously slow and pressing down just enough that each frantic breath she takes rasps against the walls of her throat. Jaina blinks and winces and finally manages to close her eyes, and the moment she does Arthas releases her neck and grabs instead at her jaw, his hand closing down hard enough to force her head back and send dull pain blossoming through her face and neck.

“Look at me.” The order is given in a low, measured voice that rings with steel and raises gooseflesh along her arms. She knows that tone, though this is the first he's ever used it on her.

She cannot bring herself to obey him. The thought of looking on him anymore is a wretched one--

He closes with her, and in spite of the restraints Jaina manages to stiffen somewhat as his other arm snakes around to settle against her back and pin her to his chest - _too close, too familiar,_ and her heart wails as a thousand memories of what once was resurface from the depths of her mind and add another layer to her torment, until she finally opens her eyes again just to make the memories _die._

The eyes that bore down into hers are hard and pitiless - twin gouts of Scourgeflame burning with the hatred that so long ago consumed him.

“You will never leave this place,” Arthas growls. His hand around her jaw is as an iron vise, his arm around her back like carven stone. One layer of restraint dissolves around her - then another, and another, so that she could move her arms again if they were not chained to the floor, if they had not become leaden weights at her sides.

“Your life and soul were forfeit the moment you set foot upon the frozen soil of Northrend.” Jaina cannot look away, not even as Arthas leans down - leans in until their noses nearly touch. Two more layers of restraint fall away. Still she cannot speak; still she cannot cast. She can only stand and tremble against him, a mouse trapped beneath the claws of a great cat.

Arthas watches her - lets her shake in his grasp and try twice to wriggle away from him. They are fruitless, futile attempts, and it feels as though he lets her try at all to drive the point home. There is no escaping him now.

“I will grant you a choice, Jaina.” His voice seethes in her ears; his breath is a whisper of frost across her face, stinging her eyes as it threatens to freeze her tears solid. “One last, small mercy - and no more.”

One of the silencing spells falls away in time for her to mewl helplessly. She knows what he will ask. She knows what his mercy will entail. He does not need to say it.

His arm twitches against her back. The hand at her jaw tightens down until the mounting pressure forces her to fall silent of her own volition, and his face twists into a glare that nearly freezes the blood within her veins as he draws away from her.

“Be silent,” he commands her, and like that the silencing spells are replaced and reinforced with a flare of icy pain through her throat. She jerks against a cough she cannot now release, and the motion is hard enough to wrench something in her neck as Arthas maintains his unyielding grip.

More tears well up within her eyes and spill down her cheeks as he stares down at her in silence again. After another moment, his brow grows smooth once more, rendering his expression dangerously unreadable. His moods are more unpredictable now than ice or sea or winter storm, constantly shifting and snapping between extremes with little room in the meantime to gain any kind of footing.

“One last choice,” he murmurs at length. His voice rolls through her like a wave, cold and remorseless as the undertow drags her downward - to what, she's too afraid to imagine.

He leans in again, his gaze burning with an intensity that terrifies her to the point of silent sobbing. She cannot flee. She cannot block out his voice. She cannot look away, no matter how she tries.

“I am going to kill you,” Arthas tells her - frank, emotionless as though he speaks of nothing more consequential than a trip to the bakery. “And when you are dead, I will raise you into my eternal service - a mindless, witless dog like all the rest.”

A hard shudder wracks Jaina as he speaks. Arthas allows her only a moment to let his words sink in before continuing in a voice like frigid steel: “Do you understand, Jaina? I will plunge Frostmourne into you and through you, until you are rent nearly in half. It will drag your soul from your body and devour it, and there you will remain trapped for all eternity, forced to watch and suffer as I twist what remains of you into a weapon to destroy the very mortals you once championed.”

The arm around her body draws her closer against him as she squirms. The hand at her jaw tightens again when she tries to jerk free from his hold.

“You will never deny me again, Jaina.” His voice has grown so soft now, a wheedling, nearly sing-song whisper. Her throat burns raw again, this time with the force of an unvoiced wail - she remembers when last he spoke like this, and it was while he still drew breath and bled and wept as mortal men do.

Arthas falls quiet, watching the tears run in hot rivers now down her face as her body heaves with sobs that will not come. His features do not soften at the sight; his grip does not relax. No words of comfort will come from him. Jaina is left to fall still again in her own time, all the while staring up at him and seeing only the barest flicker of interest in his blazing eyes.

Perhaps this is the only true mercy she will have from him: That she may have this chance to mourn for everything that was, and everything that now will never be. At the very least, he does not move to punish her, nor does he layer on any more restraints than those she already endures in an effort to stop the tremors rattling through her.

Jaina does not squander the moment.

The hand about her jaw softens as she finally grows still - softens and slides down the pillar of her neck until it rests against the flat of her chest again. Jaina trembles; her eyes flutter and then squeeze shut, only to open again when Arthas knocks her chin with the knuckle of his index finger.

“Look at me,” he hisses. “You will not hide from me any longer.”

Jaina meets his gaze again and fairly wilts beneath it. 

“You will die here,” he tells her again. “You live on borrowed time, Jaina Proudmoore - and even that is nearly spent.” Once more he leans close, so close this time and so carefully that she nearly expects him to kiss her.

He stops just shy of it, so that his lips only barely brush her own as he says, “The choice I give you now is this: You can die, bloodied and broken upon Frostmourne’s edge, and become trapped within the blade while your body is made an automaton of rotting flesh and black magic. Or,” he adds, “you can give yourself to me freely, and I will see to it that you pass gently into undeath, keeping all that you are within this body. You would rise unbroken and unfettered, preserved as you are in ice and magic more powerful than anything you can fathom now - magic _you_ would control and shape as you chose.”

Jaina shakes harder now than ever. His promises of power and preservation fall on deaf ears; her mind is stuck fast on the notion of willingly allowing him to twist her.

 _Lich,_ her mind shrieks, _He means to turn you into a lich!_

He would create a truly powerful weapon of her, if he did - perhaps even one more powerful than anything he might twist her into if he slays her instead with Frostmourne. Is that it, then? Is all of this only a ploy to turn one of the leaders of the mortal races into a weapon strong enough to shatter them at his doorstep?

But then… if that’s it, why give her the choice at all? Is it just so he can later say that she chose her fate willingly? He can say that anyway, and no one but Jaina will know the truth - and she very seriously doubts he will let her speak out against him once she's dead. Does he seek to lord his victory over her, specifically, should she submit to him? He can do that either way, and already has in the last eternity since she awakened here. He doesn't need her permission to be victorious when he already is.

Cold lips press against her own, freezing her thoughts in their tracks and shocking her into utter stillness against him. The hand at her throat has moved up again, cupping her chin as gently as though she might shatter, keeping her face turned up towards Arthas until he ends the otherwise chaste kiss with the barest flick of his tongue against her bottom lip. His eyes are bright when he looks down at her now, and seethe with an intensity that nearly undoes her.

“Come back to me, Jaina.” His voice has grown low again, low and strangely, hideously earnest. “That's why you came, isn't it?”

She came to save him. She came because she knew that he must still be in there somewhere - and in a cruel twist of fate, it seems she was right after all.

“I see everything that Frostmourne sees,” he reminds her. “I heard everything that you said to Uther. You did not come here looking to destroy me.” A hard, cruel little smile plays at his lips. He already knows the answer. “I will not be saved, Jaina. I made my choice long ago - and now, it is time for you to do the same.”

He takes away the hand at her chin and holds his arm out at his side, his hand open as if to grasp something. Jaina knows what is coming even before Frostmourne flies to his hand, its blade cleaving through the air with a mournful whine. The sudden weight of it doesn't even seem to register with Arthas, who lowers it slowly until the tip of it hovers scarcely an inch above the floor.

Jaina's eyes are locked on the sword - razor thin, razor sharp, every curve of it culminating in vicious point so that the straight blade becomes wickedly saw-toothed. Frostmourne is long and keen enough to slice her to ribbons even without sinking so far as the jagged foot before the grim crossguard…

Arthas flicks his wrist, sending the tip of the blade swinging upward by the barest inch. His arm tightens down behind her as she flinches from the horrid thing.

“It will not be a clean cut,” he tells her, and his voice is a seething whisper now, the hiss of ice water thrown across a hot stone. “I will not be content with a simple cut across your stomach. Frostmourne feeds on mortal anguish as much as it does upon the souls of those it fells. If you choose to resist me now, I will bring you such suffering before the end that the sword will be slaked for weeks upon your death alone.”

Again Jaina tries to pull away, and this time Arthas jerks her hard against him. She cannot tell if the expression across his face is a snarl… or a feral grin.

“The walls of Icecrown will echo with your shrieks,” he promises. “I cannot keep the blade from drinking of you, but I can control the speed at which it does. How will it feel,” he adds, leaning close again, voice dripping with menace, “to have your soul ripped from you a little at a time? To feel it drain away in the barest trickle - to feel the darkness close a little more about you with each stuttering throb of your dying heart?”

Jaina writhes against him, mute and unable yet to bring her hands up from where they remain bound against her sides. Arthas is most certainly grinning now, watching her with open amusement etched into his features - and then he leans further in, too close and too low to kiss, and for a moment the world swims dangerously around her as she feels him press his lips against the side of her unprotected neck. The shudder that rolls through her this time is nearly hard enough to make her ill.

“I will not kill you swiftly.” His voice rumbles through her; his lips move against her flesh, intimate and horridly, achingly familiar. Her throat feels as though it's bleeding now from the strain of having so many screams and sobs crushed into silence before any sound can come at all.

“I will bury this blade through your core one inch at a time,” Arthas murmurs against her neck. “I will freeze shut every capillary, every vein and artery sliced through, so that you do not die until I have finished with you. I will press Frostmourne onward until your throat grows ragged and bloody with your screams - and then I will fix the damage there and continue in my work until you choke again.”

His tongue flares out in full this time, painting a frigid line across her throat and yes, yes, there is most certainly blood in her mouth now and the silencing spell is nearly shattered beneath the force of the shriek it only barely manages to force back. She gags silently, unable to cough and so unable to clear her throat of the blood beginning to clot at the back of it.

Arthas feels her convulse and pulls away at last, sharp eyes swiftly noticing the blood she can feel beginning to trickle into the fissure between her spell-frozen lips. For the space of a breath he eyes her lips in silence - and then leans in again to kiss them. She closes her eyes and doesn't scream this time when his tongue slips between her lips; in his own turn, Arthas does not deepen the kiss, instead apparently content to lap away the blood still welling through her teeth.

But he does breathe out into her, an inaudible sigh that sends a soft wash of cool air back across her tongue. Only when the coolness continues on into her throat does she realize it is not breath but magic - and then the pain flees from her throat, and the blood still gathering there is dissipated, and she breathes unimpeded once again.

Something else is taken from her as he pulls away: The thick morass of the silencing spell lifts from her throat and vanishes, and just on its heels follows the spell that has until now rendered her mouth immobile, draining away from her like tension being released - though her jaw is not clenched, and her lips are loose enough that they part the moment the magic leaves them.

The sudden freedom makes her go cold. He would not return her voice to her just to listen to her shriek - not when even a quailing whimper was enough to draw his ire before.

“It doesn't have to be that way, Jaina.” Arthas looks softly down at her now, face smooth and patient to an alien degree for the man she… loved. “You don't have to suffer - not now, and not ever again. You could keep your mind and soul, and stay with me for all time - never to be torn apart again.” Steel flickers at the edges of his words, and suddenly he’s _her_ Arthas again, her prince, hotheaded and brazen and possessive…

“Arthas,” she whispers - for her throat is still weary even if there is no pain, and she fears to shatter this moment if she speaks too loudly. The arm he pins her with trembles once at the sound.

“Come back to me, Jaina,” Arthas urges her. “Say you will submit to me. Say that you will never leave my side again.”

Her heart aches intolerably with all the countless things she wishes she could say - and all the countless things she knows she should. Standing here, staring her own death in the face and knowing that no help will come and no miraculous change of heart will overtake the man who is the Lich King, she cannot begin to find the words.

Arthas meets her eyes a moment; then another binding spell wraps itself about her body as he pulls away, reaching with his empty left hand to retrieve something from beneath the chest plates of his grisly armor. A silver chain glitters about his neck, drawn into view as he pulls the necklace off in one fluid motion and reveals the pendant hanging on it--

 _“Oh--!”_ Jaina's cry breaks off into a shaking gasp as he pulls the locket into view. It's frost-encrusted now, tarnished and slightly battered after so many years - but she would know that design anywhere. She knows that locket, as surely as she knows whose picture is - or at the very least once was - contained within it.

_He kept it._

Arthas is still watching her when she finally tears her gaze away and looks up at him again. His face is unreadable; his eyes burn more brilliantly now than ever before.

“Come back to me,” he says again, holding the locket towards her like an offering. The face of it gleams in the light cast by his burning blue eyes; she looks down at it again and realizes this part of the locket is not tarnished but instead shines almost like new metal. Her breath hitches at the sight.

“…I can't.” The words slip through her lips before she has time to realize what she's saying. Tears stream anew from her eyes as she watches Arthas close his hand about the locket in a tight fist.

“You would suffer the wrath of the Lich King,” he says, speaking slowly, carefully, “rather than willingly return to my side? Did you not come to Northrend because you believed I was still here?”

Jaina's heart tears itself in two. _I did!_ She wails within her mind, even as aloud she tries and fails to stifle the first of many quiet, sobbing moans. _I came for you! I came to save you from this madness and bring you home!_

But he will not be saved.

Theramore - sweet Theramore, that smells of the sea and rings with the sound of the people she loves best going about their lives in the safe haven she has created for them.

Dalaran, soaked with magic, bursting at its seams with knowledge and promise, alive with magi both young and old who seek to unlock every secret left to be uncovered.

Stormwind, with its proud stone walls, ruled by a king every bit as proud, every bit as stubborn - a king someday to be succeeded by a prince with kindness in his eyes and sunlight in his hair.

Lordaeron - broken, hollow Lordaeron, a land of the restless dead who will never know the peace of the grave because of the prince they loved too dearly.

The prince - now king - that Jaina has never stopped loving.

The truth rounds on her like sunlight refracted through a crystal, multifaceted and cruel as it shreds the last of her defenses away. Acknowledging at last what has always been buried deep within her heart may be enough to slay her all on its own, but she loves truth - and wisdom moreso - and cannot bring herself to turn away from it. Not even now, at the end of her life, standing before her executioner and facing certain torment ere the world goes cold and dark.

She never stopped loving Arthas. But she loves Azeroth and its people and life itself far more - and Arthas has become an enemy to all of them.

Her sobs have quieted; she is resolved, now, her decision made, its consequences accepted. Choosing was ever the most painful part, and now it has been done. All that is left…

“I'm sorry, Arthas.” Her voice twists in her throat, raw with regret, weak with sorrow. The life they could have had, the undead union he promised - she can almost see them shattering before her, twin crystals cast upon the cold stone floor. “I can't stand with you in this.”

Anger - old, bitter anger - flickers through his face. He remembers as surely as she does when last she said such a thing to him.

“Then you will deny me yet again.” His words are delivered so flatly that they register as a statement - but still he does not move, neither to put the locket away, nor to lift Frostmourne for the kill. “You will turn your back on me - you, who wept before the shade of a paladin I slew for love of me.”

“You seek to destroy everything good and vibrant and _alive_ about this world,” Jaina says, resolute even as her veins wash cold again with fear - even as she feels the magic binding her constrict to an almost painful degree. “You chose this road, Arthas. I do not. I _will_ not!”

Arthas meets her gaze a moment longer, and then opens his hand again to study the locket as though with new eyes. Jaina swallows hard and forces herself to keep her eyes trained on his face; she will not allow herself to look again at Frostmourne. If she is to be trapped within the blade, unable to escape until it is broken or all the world comes crashing down, she would rather her last memory be of the man she loves. Even if it must be this twisted, murderous shadow of him.

Silence rings about them for a long, uninterrupted moment, cold and damning.

A muscle twitches infinitesimally in Arthas’ jaw, and then at last he looks up at Jaina again, his face once again hard and utterly unreadable. Jaina has only just enough mobility to flinch and squeeze her eyes shut as he closes with her…

…And is met not with the promised agony of Frostmourne piercing through her stomach, but with the cold press of lips against her own, fervent this time, fevered with the taste of desperation, sharpened with teeth and the pang of a farewell neither of them wants to say and Light, _Light,_ he _is_ here, he's standing right here in front of her and still she cannot save him.

One layer of restraint falls away from her, dissolving as the magic holding it in place wears thin and then runs out, and Jaina's hands are up against his chest now, pushing against him even as her fingers curl hard around the top edges of the chest plates and his arm wraps tight around her back again to force her up and tight against him--

Caught up in so hideous a torrent of emotion, she does not register the cold, black magic that oozes down her throat until Arthas draws away again - and then it arcs through her like a blade, seeking out and crushing her heart before she has time to scream. Not Frostmourne. It isn't Frostmourne, it isn't a stabbing wound but a many-clawed talon shedding her and crushing her and somehow, somehow her soul is drawn in agony not into a blade but something smaller, something warmer, something much, much emptier as all the world grows dark and all her sense of self dissolves away into a final, fleeing pang of sorrow.

 

The magic restraining Jaina falls away as she breathes her last; Arthas catches her easily as she falls limp against him, and lowers her body gently to the floor, careful to keep Frostmourne’s edge well away from her until he is able to set it down and push it away from them. The cursed blade has more than enough power to dismantle an incomplete phylactery, and regardless of his threats it is not his will that Jaina Proudmoore should be trapped within the sword.

He does not remove the saronite chains still wrapped about her arms and legs; there will need to be something still restraining her when she arises. He does not anticipate that she will be… pleased.

Let her keep her mind; her broken, bleeding heart has been taken in its stead. Let her keep this form that is the only one that suits her. Let her keep all that she once was. She will serve him even so, and let the memories of her life before serve to torment her for her treachery.

A lurid sea-green light erupts from within the locket, shining through the seam between its halves and washing across his gloved palm. A quiet, tortured howl echoes faintly about the timeworn trinket - and then there is only silence as the light diminishes, reduced now to a soft, gently pulsating glow.

Arthas waits a moment longer… and the presence in the locket awakens within his mind, soft and sweet and terribly, terribly afraid as he holds his hand out towards the limp body beneath him.

Jaina twitches once, and then her chest swells softly as the phylactery’s magic pours the greater part of her unliving soul back into its old vessel. Only a fraction remains within the locket; it is this fraction that binds her irrevocably to this world so long as the locket endures, and it is this fraction that he will use to keep her at his side, never to flee from him again. It doesn't matter that she must be drawn unwilling into his service. She has all eternity now to learn to accept her fate.

Arthas brushes a lock of hair from her face, then slowly stands and backs away, drawing the locket back around his neck before he puts forth his will and commands her.

“Rise, Jaina.” His voice cracks like lightning about the empty room. The soul fragment trapped within the locket wails again and thrashes uselessly against him; he crushes it down with ease, and Jaina jerks again in response.

“Rise up, Lich Queen.” A thrill runs through him, dark and heady. “Rise, and take your rightful place at my side.”

Where she lays sprawled upon the stones, Jaina sighs, and sound is long and low and echoes faintly.

Her eyes are sea-green flames within her pale face when she opens them a moment later.


End file.
